


experiments in space

by embraidery



Series: trillian astra [2]
Category: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 3, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:00:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23036707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embraidery/pseuds/embraidery
Summary: Continued from 'babel fish out of water,' the rest of Trillian's normal day in space.
Series: trillian astra [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1655596
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6
Collections: Purimgifts 2020





	experiments in space

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Daegaer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daegaer/gifts).



[ID: a photo of a pink cocktail in a glass with a zig-zag stem sitting on a striped wooden desk. The cocktail includes a sprig of greens and two dark spheres on a stick -- maybe an olive and a juniper berry? I don't know stuff about cocktails. The background around the cocktail is dark, with a gentle overlay of a blue to pink gradient. The bottom half of the image reads, in three different seafoam-coloured fonts, "jynnan tonnyx," "chinant/mnigs," and "jin'an'doneks." The first is in a fun, blocky font. The second is in a cursive font. The last is in a very thin, elegant font. End ID.]

* * *

Trillian’s pet project was learning alien languages. She didn’t need to learn how to speak or listen because of babel fish, but she wanted to be able to read a book again. Even a magazine would be progress. At one point she’d found the scripts Ford kept in his bag, but she didn’t want to read any of those.  _ I can never read Pride and Prejudice again.  _ (Not that she’d been that big a fan of Jane Austen, if she was honest. It was more the principle of the thing.) So she learned to read Betelgeusian by comparing the English and Betelgeusian versions of  _ The Guide _ , which admittedly wasn’t the best way to learn. She knew way more words for alcoholic beverages and planets than she knew novel-words.

“May I have a  _ jin’an’doneks _ ?” she asked the Nutrimatic Drinks Dispenser one day, in an effort to practice her pronunciation. She knew that the  _ jin’an’doneks _ was a fruity bubbly drink, but the Nutrimatic spat out a gin and tonic instead. Still, she counted it as a win and took her drink to her room.

“Room” was a bit of an overstatement. It was clear to Trillian that the designers of the  _ Heart of Gold _ had focused about 99.2% of their energy on making the main cabin and the outside of the ship look good, while the bunks looked as though they’d been thrown together at the last second. Her bed folded out of the wall, leaving no floor space whatsoever (and that was not an exaggeration: she had to stand out in the hallway to unfold her bed, then take a running leap to land on it). She still liked her room, though. It was right against the belly of the ship, and the perspex windows afforded her an unbeatable view of space. 

She’d asked Eddie once if she could have some paints and a canvas, and together they’d messed about with the Infinite Improbability Drive until some painting supplies appeared out of nowhere along with a number of clothes hangers and half a mothball. So in the evenings, after she’d read another chapter of  _ The Guide _ in Betelgeusian, Trillian painted the view out of her window. She covered her ceiling with paintings of the starry galaxy around her.


End file.
